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Hardly Settled in House, but Already in Hot Seat

Much has changed for the Schilling family since Bobby Schilling was elected to Congress. One day last week, Mr. Schilling found himself not helping to take care of the family's pizzeria but making a speech to local Republicans in Moline, Ill.Credit
Daniel Acker for The New York Times

MOLINE, Ill. — In the 11 weeks since Representative Bobby Schilling left his family pizza business to join Congress, he has learned that sleeping on an office couch is extremely uncomfortable, that appearing on “Meet the Press” can be daunting, and that voting against federal money for a local rail project will cause some of your constituents to become very cranky.

Back home, his son Aaron, 21, left in charge of the pizzeria, recently fired his younger brother Joe, a situation that slightly unnerves Mr. Schilling, who has 10 children. Another son, Terry, who manages his campaigns, has been needling him to raise more money.

“It’s been kind of difficult,” Mr. Schilling said as he bit into a slice of pizza between a meeting with local officials about federal flood management reimbursement and a fund-raiser for the local Republican Party.

Mr. Schilling may still be getting accustomed to life in Washington, but here in his district near the Iowa border he is already battling to keep his seat in 2012. The Democratic Party is taking aim at 14 freshmen Republicans in the House, of 87 elected, whom it deems the most vulnerable.

One of them is Mr. Schilling, who defeated a two-term Democrat, Phil Hare, with 53 percent of the vote, becoming the first Republican to represent this district in the House in nearly three decades. Already, just a few months into Mr. Schilling’s term, Democrats have run radio ads and made automated calls accusing him of supporting a “partisan plan” to raid public education funds.

Republicans elected in traditionally blue districts like this one are feeling the tug between their need to attract Democrats again and the omnipresent threat of someone more to the right waiting in the primary wings.

“We supported him,” said John Blair, a Tea Party activist from Moline. “We watch these guys, we monitor them, and if they don’t fulfill what they said they’re going to do, well ... .”

The pressure is only going to build as Congress returns this week facing polarizing spending battles and the possibility of a government shutdown. Every vote by the new crop of lawmakers is watched by both ends of the political spectrum.

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Representative Bobby Schilling prepared to speak back home last week. “It's been kind of difficult,” he said of the transition.Credit
Daniel Acker for The New York Times

“You’re getting hit from both sides,” Mr. Schilling said. “If you vote for this bill, you’re voting for Obamacare. I’m like, ‘Come on!’ You have people on your side shooting at you and people on the other side shooting at you, and you have to proceed with caution without disenfranchising your base.”

Mr. Schilling knows he is on the hit list of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — “I’m at the top,” he said, somewhat proudly — but is unperturbed. “They’re going to be shocked,” he said. “I’m a hard worker. I’m a people person.”

As he sat chatting in his pizza place after the flood meeting with local officials — most of them Democrats angry about a lack of federal reimbursement for a flood response (“See how they came in here? They were mad. They thought ‘Oh, this Republican,’ but they left smiling.”) — Mr. Schilling spoke with pride about joining the Center Aisle Caucus, a bipartisan House group.

He also said he found it increasingly tiresome to see social policy amendments attached to spending bills that the Democratic-controlled Senate would never accept. “We’ve got to put together stuff that can actually pass,” he said.

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“You’ve got a president on vacation again, and we’re going to war,” he said when an attendee asked about the events in Libya.

Another asked: “I heard our troops are going to be operating under the French. Is that true?” Mr. Schilling said he would look into that on Tuesday.

Some of his votes have caused him grief back home and will no doubt be fodder for campaign ads against him. He voted with his Republican colleagues to eliminate a $230 million federal grant to build an Amtrak line from Chicago to Iowa City, long coveted in the district.

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The duties at Mr. Schilling's restaurant have fallen to his son Aaron.Credit
Daniel Acker for The New York Times

After the vote, Mr. Schilling told local reporters that he actually supported the rail line and believed that the Senate would not allow the cut anyway. Mr. Schilling now says the rail project is good, just not now. “Right now it’s all about prioritizing,” he said.

These are the sorts of things that have Democrats, desperate to dig out after their defeat last year, looking at Mr. Schilling like a sirloin steak after a fast.

“Schilling is illustrative of the problem that all the 14 have,” said Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is focusing on districts where Mr. Obama and Senator John Kerry both won as presidential nominees and where Democrats have a registration advantage.

“He is taking positions that are out of the mainstream,” she said, adding, “The types of votes he has taken definitely make him vulnerable.”

Ms. Crider’s counterpart at the National Republican Congressional Committee, Paul Lindsay, dismissed such talk. “The larger challenge is how Democrats plan to defend their own members who barely survived re-election in 2010,” Mr. Lindsay said, “and still have their party’s unpopular and fiscally irresponsible record hanging over their heads.”

Mr. Schilling said time would prove that he was serving his district well. “The first 60 days I was really overwhelmed,” he said. “There was so much information coming at me at once.” But now things are settling down, and he is finding his legislative sea legs, he said.

He is often worried about how things are going back home. He is not there to take his children to the school bus in the mornings, help that his wife misses, and some of the older ones are staying out too late. “You don’t want them to get in trouble, to get their names in the paper,” he said.

His wife, Christie Schilling, concedes that it has been a hard transition. “It hasn’t been beneficial to our family,” she said. “But it’s the right thing for our country.”

At the fund-raiser, Mr. Schilling told guests about the view of the Capitol from his office window. “At night, it’s the most awesome picture,” he said. “A lot of nights when I’m on the phone there working, I’ll talk to Christie and I’m just gazing over there thinking, ‘How did this happen?’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on March 28, 2011, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hardly Settled in House, but Already in Hot Seat. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe